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John Krajewski, a developer of the multiplayer game Eco, has some really interesting thoughts on how players have recreated real-world economic systems in their game.

I mention this here because of the notion that NPCs being as close to first-class players in LT as possible is maybe still a goal.

If so, then as human players in Eco invent economic structures and tools such as market pricing and inflation, some of the lessons learned might be useful for designing the core rules for economic activity by NPCs in LT.

An interesting read, I think as he says, that sort of mechanic has great potential and will either be amazing or disastrous depending on the players. However, I think that getting NPCS to understand macroeconomic and central banking policies is a bit much for LT.

I personally think that having a universal currency, perhaps deriving value from the quantity of a very specific rare resource or difficult-to-produce item would be best. Factions and individuals could create their own tokens, which can have their own exchange rate with the universal currency, on the condition that the issuer pay the universal credit value of all their tokens if handed in. So for example, the Dasney Corp issues Muckiebucks, with their declared value to be 1.15 Galactic Credits each. Dasney Corp then issues an "exchange fee" of 0.35 galactic credits per credit for every transaction with them and theirs not conducted in Muckiebucks. This incentivises players who do any significant business with Dasney Corp to convert over a portion of their liquid assets to Muckiebucks to avoid the exchange fee.

However, if Dasney Corp, which can issue as many Muckiebucks as it likes overleverages itself and someone comes in with 1 billion Muckiebucks and demands an exchange, but Dasney Corp only has 1 billion Galactic Credits, then Dasney is immediately in debt to that person by 150 million Credits. So a player can leverage their private token currency, but that can be very risky if you don't have enough clout to warrant your own currency or if your tokens are worth more than your actual assets.

Just a thought, but I think we've had this discussion before and iirc it's just too complicated and not worth the extra code nor CPU.

Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.Imagination Fertilizer